Manor Theatre — Attraction in Pittsburgh

Small, four-theater movie house specializing in limited release movies, art films, or those movies that may have an appeal to smaller niche audiences. The extended walk-up lobby is more-or-less for show during the day as the tickets are purchased at the concession stand. If you’re a collector of actual ticket stubs (like those who collect tickets or stubs from concerts or Broadway shows) all you get here is a basically a “ticket stub” printed on cash register receipt paper. Good enough I guess.

The lounge area at the concession stand is rather unique and very attractive, with several groupings of padded seats around a table, and a couch with two chairs around a large coffee table. There’s a bar for alcoholic beverages with several high chairs. And overhead at the concession stand a gorgeous stained glass light fixture. The lounge area in itself is a novel idea, but there in lies a critical design flaw of the theater. If you’re in Theater 2 (the one against the far wall as you enter the concession stand area) noise from lounge area can easily be heard by guests seated in the back rows of the treater. I went to go see “Loving Vincent”, a quiet film that really never got above a normal “ speaking voice”, and I could easily hear people out in the lobby, not only the staff as they were “working”, but guests talking loud and laughing sitting on the couch. It was quite distracting to say the least, and this is something management should address, especially if the lobby is full. Maybe put the quieter movies in the back (Theaters 3 and 4) away from the lounge?

Since these theaters are small there is no “center seating”, which I prefer, the aisle down the middle sort of eliminates that. The large double-door entranceway from the concession area affords no way to block the light and noise from entering the theater when people come and go. Thankfully during our performance no one did. The high-back chairs are comfortable enough.

With all of its attractive pluses and glaring minuses, without theaters like this some films would never be viewed as the large cineplex theaters would rather show 3D garbage than enrich audiences with great pieces like “Loving Vincent”, which I drove two hours one-way to see, and...

I genuinely wanted to like this place, because I love independent cinema and it's one of PGH's better options. My experience (overselling tickets plus extremely rude customer service) left a bitter taste for me, though, and I haven't been back yet.

The Manor is probably perfectly fine on nights when it's not too crowded, or for movies that don't have high demand. I had a bad experience, though, trying to see an indie movie (Phantom Thread) on its opening weekend. Assuming it would be crowded, I bought a ticket online the day before, and arrived to the theater 15 minutes prior to showtime. The first issue was that there is only one line, even for pre-purchased tickets -- so I had to wait about 10 minutes to get in. The second, much larger issue was that they had OVERSOLD the movie! So by the time I arrived at the register to pick up my tickets and enter the theater, I was told that I could go into the theater if I really wanted to, but that they couldn't guarantee a seat and that I would probably have to stand.

I did check inside the theater, and as they had warned, there were no seats. When I returned to the register and asked for a refund, the person working the register was very rude when I asked for a refund -- he acted as if he had never heard such an imposition from a customer, and he also refused to reimburse the credit card fees from purchasing the ticket online. When you've just ruined a customer's moviegoing experience, you shouldn't nickel and dime them over a $2 credit card fee. You should probably also apologize, rather than act like they are inconveniencing...

This was my first time here and it was honestly so bad. The guy at the front had zero customer service skills when I asked how this theater worked and told me nothing. I literally interrupted his reading time.

The main lobby seemed uptight and disorderly at the same time with no employee staying at the main food counter.

Well the uptight part changed because the entire time in the movie you can hear the lobby. People yelling, music playing etc.

Now the worse part was we had a terrible guest in our theater. Someone eventually reported it and staff made the experience worse.

You do not need 3 people entering the room and then pacing around ruining the movie even more.

And STILL taking no action because the guest continued to act out and yell after they left. Why even come in and make it worse and stay for an entire minute and then leave. What were you doing other than making it more annoying?

The main guy kept leaving and going back in, that was sign number one, his kid even ran out yelling for him at one point!

And I guarantee they have people going from one movie to another because how do you walk into a movie casually 45 minutes after it starts and sit in the back. At least 2 groups did this.

I got more plot from my experience here than I did the film. So so so much ridiculousness and a lack of management and security. I even felt unsafe a few times from how this guest was yelling and when another guest started yelling STFU at them.

Never again. Go to AMC. The reviews are only decent from existing forever and having obsessed locals that don't venture out of their...